Hello lovely friends! Today we are back with another installment in the Exploring Reggio series with our friends at The Imagination Tree, An Everyday Story, One Perfect Day, Learn with Play at Home, and Racheous. If you are new to the series, you can read my introductory post here and view the entire collection here.
Today’s topic is “construction.” A big part of the Reggio Emilia Approach (REA) is supplying children with a variety of materials, on both a large and small scale, with which to experiment and represent their ideas. You’ll see children in Reggio-inspired classrooms using building blocks of all shapes and sizes, recycled materials, scrap wood and metal, loose parts- really anything you could dream of to construct replicas, inventions, prototypes, or all of the above. People creating REA-inspired environments at home may not have entire rooms available to devote to construction materials, but basic building blocks are easy to fit into any home environment and can be enhanced in any number of ways. My friend Kate over at An Everyday Story has a great post on using blocks in a Reggio-inspired home that has lots of great ideas for extending block play based on your child’s unique interests.
Building A Pet Store
Today I’m sharing a way we expanded on our basic block play with loose parts and animal figures to construct our own “pet store.” This activity encompasses both construction and small world play, another one of our favorite activities and one that is simply fabulous for language development (see my post here on small world play and how to use it to build language skills).
One of our favorite “field trips” to take is to the local pet store. The twins love to go look at all of the different animals that are on display and will chatter about it for hours after we’ve left. Something they have started doing recently is rehashing their pet store experiences through play- it began as simply finding containers to serve as “homes” for their stuffed animals and setting them up all over the living room, and has progressed to drawing (or directing me to draw) pet stores and using blocks to build increasingly elaborate animal mansions. Recently, I was lucky enough to receive a Pets TOOB from Safari Ltd. and was delighted when it arrived- it contained every single animal that we have seen at the pet store with the exception of the hedgehog (who is still extremely cute) and I knew the twins would love to use it in their pet store pretend play. (*I did receive this TOOB for free, but all opinions are my own and I was not compensated for this post.)
To set up the invitation, I gathered our basket of Haba basic building blocks
Upon seeing the invitation after their nap, the twins got right to work exploring the different materials and constructing play scenes. They were very interested in replicating all of the different homes they have seen for the pet store animals and making sure that each animal had exactly what it needed to be comfortable, whether it be food, water, a friend, or bedding to keep them warm.
Right away Sydney drew some water for the frog. I love how they naturally incorporate art media into their play. Gives me chills.
The frog was eventually joined by his other water-dwelling friends. Neat how you can see evidence of the ability to sort animals by their habitats without explicitly instructing them to do so. Play is the best teacher.
The plastic domes made great enclosures for the different habitats. Here is the ferret safe and sound in his little home.
The cat got a more elaborate home that really does resemble the tower that the kittens live in at the real life pet store. Notice the blue water for drinking and the glass gem “food”- the paper shred represents a “cat toy” so the cat won’t be “boring.”
Will spent the most time carefully constructing elaborate habitats for the bird included in the TOOB
This was such a fun play session to watch. I find it magical to witness all of these different media inspire the twins to recreate their experiences and ideas. As they get older, they will be able to use these techniques to expand, explore, and refine ideas for project work. It makes me giddy just thinking about it. I’m so excited for them!
Now, don’t forget to visit my collaborators and their lovely posts:
Construction With Blocks and Tape at Learn With Play at Home
Construction: Part 1 at Racheous
The post Exploring Reggio: Expanding Block Play appeared first on Twodaloo.
